Legalizers? What are you using?

[Videomansf]

The best way to legalize is the old way. Good old vector scopes, and the 3 way color corrector.

VM

[Nick Price]

Hi David,
I have done 50 or so onlines here in London with the eyeheight minibox, which is identical to their new legaleyes box. In fact the new box has a nice control panel too. I pay close attention to the FCP scope and the hardware scope, make sure they are identical. Havent had any rejections yet……
nick

[Walter Biscardi]

[david davidson] ”
I’ve heard FCP’s scopes are not 100% accurate because of the way they scan the picture. I’ve also heard that the “broadcast safe” filter at any setting doesn’t guarantee safety either”

Actually, the scopes are about 99.9% accurate. We ran a test here with the Tektronix WFM700 SD/HD Scope and found the FCP scopes were easily within 1% of what that scope was showing us. I would feel totally confident color correcting with the FCP scopes and have done so.

Noting beats old fashioned color correcting. I use a combination of the 3 Way CC, Broadcast Safe and Levels filter for the HD series we’re cutting here. Once I established the base lines for all three filters, it becomes quite easy to keep re-applying the filters as I go along.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Tom Matthies]

How do I obtain legal levels?
CC filter & a Tektronix 1740A scope.
Tom

[Chris Poisson]

Hey Tom,

Most of the time I use the scopes with Joe’s Levels. It’s quick and painless.

[Michael Alberts]

I know of several facilites using the Videotek DL-810. It’s a great little box. Set it and forget it. I’ve been looking into the Eyeheight Legaleyes for our facility. Eyeheight is out of England (www.eyeheight.com) Both companies also have products for HD if that’s the way you’re going.
FCP’s Broadcast Safe filter is not perfect. We’ve had stuff kicked back from A&E for the blacks being too low. The source was multi-generation BetaSP in which the blacks dropped to about 3 IRE for several seconds. Try catching that you your scopes! The FCP Broadcast Safe filter does nothing to the blacks if they’re illegal. Tektronix has talked about porting their WFMNLE product over to FCP, but as of NAB they hadn’t made any decision yet. That’s would be a great product for FCP. I’ve seen it demoed and was quite impressed. It’s a bit pricy however for what it does.

Michael Alberts
Ambidextrous Productions, Inc.

[David Davidson]

Thanks Michael, this is exactly what I’m talking about! There was someone else here on the boards who said similar things; FCP broadcast safe and the like may not catch everything, especially because of the way it measures the signal. Perhaps it didn’t catch your analog source material because it wasn’t digitally originated to begin with..

Professional facilities seem to have legalizers at the end of their SDI pipe before it goes to a deck. We’re looking at the UKs legaleyes product because it does both HD and SD, like others Leader, etc.

The scope / legalizer combo is what we’re after.

thanks

david

[Graeme Nattress]

FCP itself does not allow the creation of super-black, and I don’t know if it’s possible to write a filter to catch it. I can certainly try if you have any superblack footage that you could send me. Working with purely digital video, I’ve never seen superblack video ever on my FCP set up.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Walter Biscardi]

[Michael Alberts] “FCP’s Broadcast Safe filter is not perfect. We’ve had stuff kicked back from A&E for the blacks being too low. The source was multi-generation BetaSP in which the blacks dropped to about 3 IRE for several seconds. Try catching that you your scopes! The FCP Broadcast Safe filter does nothing to the blacks if they’re illegal.”

I got the same thing on our first test with the network, blacks were 3-7 points too low because I forgot that FCP will output super blacks on any timeline. Once they told us that, it was pretty obvious on the FCP Scopes. I just didn’t see it on the first run through.

The Levels filter fixed this issue and now we’re all set. The Broadcast Safe Filter is good for the high broadcast levels, keeping you at 100IRE or below. But for blacks, the Levels filter is the way to go.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Bret Williams]

If you have an IO set to strip out blacks from analog sources (as you should) to make them 0, and you have multiple sources feeding it from a router you’ll get get super blacks someday. I see it all the time at this one facility where they refuse to set their DVCam decks analog output to “add” setup. They do this because they have their DVCam cameras set to “add” setup. So, all is fine until you bring in miniDV footage or freelancer footage where the blacks are done correctly at 0. When you mix in that footage, the analog blacks stay 0, and then the IO strips them down to -7ire. Superblack.